Review: Game of Thrones S7E3 – The Queen’s Justice

The positioning of pieces in preparation for the great war continued in this week’s episode of Game of Thrones, entitled The Queen’s Justice. It was an episode light on action and with a script almost entirely composed of one-line omens and pseudo-wisdom. Sound boring? It was, but Euron Greyjoy and some more girl-on-girl shenanigans made it just about tolerable.

This shouldn’t need to be said, but we understand some of you are a little more brittle than others: The following review of the latest episode of Game of Thrones, an episode that hasn’t aired at a reasonable time yet, contains many, many spoilers. It should also be noted that this review of a program for ADULTS contains adult language.

After six years and sixty three episodes, the Bastard of Winterfell and the Mother of Dragons occupied the same big, dark, stone room – with underwhelming results. The first ten minutes of the historic get-together was taken up by Missandei listing all of Daenerys’ titles – Mother of Dragons, Breaker of Chains, The Unburned, The Wicked Witch in the West, The King of Beers, The Dark Knight Rises, Inception. Daeny then proceeds to invoke the pact Jon’s ancestors had made with her own Targaryen relatives, omitting the bits about her father burning Jon’s grandfather alive. The King in the Norff was reticent about swearing loyalty to the daughter of the Mad King and instead went off on one about zombies like a f*****g mental patient. Davos Seaworth backs him up by saying something about gravy. Daenerys is, weirdly, unconvinced. Luckily for everyone, the Spider shows up with news of Euron Greyjoy’s naval victory and everyone breaks for lunch. After some cliff-top brooding and some sage advice from Tyrion, Jon strikes a deal with Daenerys that will allow him to mine dragon glass. Who isn’t excited by mining contracts?

Davos loves gravy

Out on the ocean, one of the remaining vessels from Yara’s fleet fishes Theon out of the drink. He swears that he tried to save Yara, but no one believes the Octopussy.

Euron parades through the streets of Kings Landing with the spoils of his victory in chains behind him. The adoration of the crowd gives him a boner. Cersei receives the conquering hero and promises him his “heart’s desire” once the war is won. He wisely asks Jamie Lannister for some sex tips, because if anyone knows how to get her off, it’s the man with a golden finger-blaster for a hand. To think that Bran Stark was once pushed out of a window to keep the Lannister incest a secret when, in the end, it turns out everyone already knew. Cersei devises a fiendish punishment for Ellaria Sand, forcing her to watch as she poisones her only surviving daughter with a kiss. Why it was necessary for the poison to be delivered by frenching is anyone’s guess, but the lesbian undercurrent of Season 7 shows no signs of abating.

At Winterfell, Sansa was overjoyed by the return of half man, half sled, Bran Stark. That joy was short-lived, however, as the black hole of acting talent where Isaac Hempstead Wright’s heart should be consumed all the emotion within a ten kilometre radius of him. He’s the only one who knows that Jon is a Targaryen though, so until he passes on that nugget of information, we are stuck with him. Once he does, hopefully Jamie will find a higher window to throw him out of. A soulless brother is the least of Sansa’s worries, as some impressive gluten mathematics reveals that Winterfell will not have enough food to survive a prolonged winter. If the season so far is any indication, Sansa will solve this problem by snogging Melisandre.

The look of a woman who has just realised her brother is rubbish

The Unsullied army arrives at Casterly Rock and uses Tyrion’s sex-sewers to sneak inside, only to find that most of the Lannister army has pissed off somewhere else. Grey Worm sheds a tear for his missing nads as Euron’s fleet fingers the Unsullied ships senseless.

Said Lannister army has emigrated to pastures golden, showing up at Highgarden to loot the place and get some revenge on Olenna Tyrell. The riches of Highgarden should be enough to keep Mycroft Holmes happy back in Bravos, but the revelations of Tyrion’s innocence regarding Joffrey’s murder might be the most valuable thing Jamie will take back to Kings Landing. Cersei probably won’t be too happy that the love of her life has found new reasons to defend the dwarf, but Jamie can always placate her with a cascade of the wealth acquired from at Highgarden – because there’s nothing Cersei likes more than being showered in gold by her brother….

The Queen’s Justice did just enough to keep it on the right side of boring-as-hell. The mid-season episode of Game of Thrones usually brings with it dialled up drama and violence, but with the reduced episode count of Season 7, it’s hard to know if that will be the case this year. We may have to wait until the final episode of this truncated series to have the knobs all turned up to eleven. Game of Thrones’ third episode of Season 7, The Queen’s Justice, gets a safe, if unremarkable 2.5 rotted corpse-daughters out of 5.